(4)Bayonetta vs (13)Riku 2018
Ulti's Analysis Remember how I said during the Geralt round 1 writeup that a case could be made for any of the top half of this division winning three matches? Well count me in as one of the morons who thought Riku could win three times. Good hell. I did eventually change my mind and picked a Geralt/Auron final, but even looking back on what I almost chose there is so embarrassing. I ended up picking Riku to win twice, and I didn't think the logic was that bad, either! Right before this contest, a massive Kingdom Hearts 3 hype video came out. If ever there was a time for Riku and Sora to go on a tear in a contest, this would be the year. Pair that with Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash Bros history, and it was a recipe for success. Plus I like the dude's character arc. Sue me. Oh and I'm not joking about Bayonetta being the most hated character in Smash history, either. She has Kirby/Pikachu/Ness from 64, Sheik and Fox from Melee, and Meta Knight from Brawl completely and totally beat. Bayonetta in Smash 4 might legitimately be the most hated character in fighting game history (Smash is a fighting game, fuck off), and it frankly might not be close. People who play her in tournaments get death threats, which says a lot about how dumb the Smash fans are but I digress. Only Akuma from SF2 compares, and he required a complicated code to unlock and was banned from tournaments anyway. I can't do this justice with words. I'll let the pros handle that subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gilsv3c4-7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3RzgNS-pWw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e0BVxl3gGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MkKxGgARnI When you factor all that together, Riku deserved to win. And then on a personal level, when you factor in music it isn't close. Music in games means a lot to me, and if your music is bad I grade you down pretty hard. I'm sure Bayonetta's games are fine. Haven't played them yet, but if they're anything like DMC3, and by all accounts they are, then they're ok. I mean Lady Gaga likes those games, and she would never support anything that's totally dumb like radicalized feminism, right? Oh. But to the point. Every. Single. Song in those games is objectively trash. All of them. It's the singular reason I haven't played those games yet. I can't actually listen to any of it without wanting my ears sewn shut. I'm sure Bayonetta actually deserves her contest strength, but she's probably be on Link's level if we could get rid of that laughably awful pair of soundtracks. And I usually like that style of music, too. It's on the level of The World Ends With You for worst soundtrack ever. This win was convincing enough to make it look like she would make it to Auron, and from there, who knows? No one else in the top half of this division looked all that good in round one, outside Pac-Man but we all know he's fool's gold. Lightning_Strikes's Analysis What happened?: And now for the overperformance of the round. Again, this was a highly debated match. Bayonetta didn't look great in 2013, Riku is a decent meat and potatoes high(ish) midcarder. Sora didn't look amazing, but he didn't look dreadful either. To Bayonetta's advantage, she has become effectively a Nintendo character since, with 2 being a Nintendo first party game, 1 and 2 coming to Switch this year, and her being in Smash. So, based on the 2013 stats, this would go to Riku with 62%. Then this match starts and Bayonetta destroys Riku after the board vote ends. Not only that, but she built her lead over time. What could this mean?: This has to be the biggest boost of the contest. Bayonetta flipped a projected 62% loss to win with over 64%. That is mad. She is looking like a serious division finalist here, perhaps even a division winner. I never thought I would say that. She alsoo didn't trend like a Nintendo character so that's interesting, though that might just be because of Riku. This was possibly the most exciting day yet overall, and I love the way this contest has gone. Anything could happen. Safer777's Analysis KH 3 boost oh yeah! Yeah I am kidding. Bayonetta won easily. She is in Smash you know. As for Riku...He does really bad in these contests. At least he avoided a doubling I guess. But man if only Riku was in Smash or something! But yeah I guess if KH 3 comes out he will gain a boost or something. But as for now he sucks. Also I believe that Bayonetta 3 is a Nintendo exlusive so we can consider her a Nintendo character now correct? Also most people had Riku winning this. The X-Stats were saying that too! But I wonder why he lost that easily? Yeah Bayo is in Smash. But the trailer for KH 3 came a little while ago. But nope. People don't care for KH it seems anymore. That is too bad. KH 2 is an amazing game no doubt. So yeah. Pretty embarassing match for Riku here. Tsunami's Analysis The Gurus were split even tighter on this match than the last one, Bayonetta ultimately winding up with the 82-78 advantage. At one point during the inputting of Guru brackets, Bayonetta was the favorite to reach Round 3 despite being an underdog against Riku. (The COOKIE did indeed end up with an impossible bracket, but only because of the double elimination format; Mario was a 78-67 favorite over Snake in the Legends semis, and with Mario-Snake so split it's no surprise that Cloud was the most common pick to win the Losers semi, but Snake was ultimately the most common pick to win the Losers final.) The Oracle Challenge broke 45-29 in Bayonetta's favor, with the Bayonetta pickers largely having a lower average percentage than the Riku pickers, resulting in a consensus of Bayonetta 50.49%. The highest pick was a flat 60-40, which was a full 2% contrast of the next highest picks. 64.40%. That's what Bayonetta got. Holy crap this was a blowout. Casuals got one over on us here; sure we ultimately wound up favoring the right character but they broke 70% in prediction percentage and a 45.60 is an awful score for a first-place Oracle prediction. Not the worst, obviously, since we've had matches where we were unanimously wrong (Magus-Knuckles 2005, for example), but not good. Category:2018 Contest Matches